Monday, May 21, 2012

My dad organised a church picnic/BBQ at Cornwall Park for lunch on ANZAC Day.
Only a few of us went - the Smiths, de Bruins, de Boers, Mrs. Campbell, and us.
Personally I found it a bit cold (when isn't NZ cold tho!?) but the sun was nice!! lol

So yeah we had food (hehe the best part!), walked with the little ones to the hill you can see in the center of the photo on the left a few times, talked(!), later Mrs. Campbell, the de Boers, de Bruins, my dad, Monique, and Bryce left. Mr. Smith went to his car to prepare for the service that night, and took Amelia with him because she was really tired! The remainder of us went for a walk around One Tree Hill.

Dieuwe de Boer and his girlfriend Amie,
with my lil' sis Laura

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Ok so my hair looks like the wind's been at it,
but otherwise I kinda like this photo!

Saturday, May 19, 2012

The cake.
Obviously we didn't put the exact number of candles on,
but that was because we figured if we did we'd have to call
the fire departement first. :P
(sorry, I saw that in an ecard the other day....)

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So yeah, my Dad had a birthday. We made a cake and got some pressents for him, didn't do anything huge (maybe next year lol!!). I discovered that posing for photos isn't what he does best, but I'm still posting a few below. Enjoy!

Saturday, May 12, 2012

I know it's getting kind of close - only two weeks away(!) - but I just registered for the 40 hour famine.
This is my third time, and I would love it if you would help me raise funds to help the the hungry in Mali and Niger.

Wednesday, May 09, 2012

﻿ One day during the holidays (sorry I don't recall which one exactly! lol), the Smiths (our pastor's family) came over for afternoon tea.

I must say the double choc chip muffins were, as usual, a hit! Sorry, no pics, but in fact I'm probably doing you a favour - if you saw a pic of these mouth-watering, choc-filled muffins, you might salivate so heavily your keyboard would be kinda gross...:P

But anyway, to get back to what I was writing about...

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I'm not sure the ukelele is supposed to be on the tramp...!

﻿ Nobody in our family can really play piano (Danielle was taking lessons last term, but no-one is learning right now), and Mrs. Smith is Grade 9 (!), so it was really nice to hear the piano played that well, despite the fact that she played from memory because we don't have any books her level!

Diana and Amelia LOVED playing with each other. I think Amelia has probably only met people within our church so far, and it is relatively small, so I think there is like one other girl her age (who is our cousin!). Also, my siblings were talking for AGES before the Smiths even came to NZ about being friends, going to their place to play and whatever!

Despite the fact that I was sewing, I still managed to read to Aaron (4yrs). He just loves Thomas the Tank Engine, so I got to read parts of a few books to him (haha little ones aren't patient enough to listen to a whole story!), and name the characters on the covers of the books shown on the back covers; thankfully their names were written down, or I would have been stuck!!! lol

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Amelia and Diana pose...

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I think Mum enjoyed sharing some of her accumulated homeschool knowledge; it's nearly 11 years since she began homeschooling me!

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

We gave Monique her pressents on April 7th. We had planned to do them sooner, but we didn't have many until then, and in fact we still didn't have them all! But one of them had a fast-approaching expiry date, so we couldn't wait any longer! lol

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Pressent from Maria (2yrs)

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Enthusiastic hug for Diana! (6yrs)

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Hug for Mummy...

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New handbag

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Who doesn't get excited over chocolate? lol

﻿﻿So...she got....a Bubbly chocolate bar (which Bryce had already sampled...but that's another story!), a handbag, mud cake (!) (yeah that's the one I mentioned previously! It worked well for the rest of us, cos we all got to help eat it!!! haha), a gift card to choose her own watch, and SS necklace with CZ, 2 Winnie the Horse Gentler books, chocolate edition Scrabble, horse stickers, and a smiggle mechanical pencil.

And I hadn't manage to find anything I really wanted to give her (as had happened with Danielle), so I gave her an Urban Angel top and a Toblerone, at a later date. =)

That's one great thing about having a higher-than-normal number of children(!), it means more pressents, because everybody gets to give one!!! haha :P